The National Women's Chess Championship kicked off on the 17th of November at the Diamond Club, Urbana Jewels in Jaipur Rajasthan. Even though some top women players are missing from the field, the event has attracted as many as 112 participants from all corners of the country. Three rounds have been played so far and each one has been fully action packed. After several upsets and brilliancies, seven players including the top-seeded Vijayalakshmi Subbaraman and -- surprisingly -- two sub-1800 rated women have made it atop the leaderboard with a perfect 3.0/3 score. We bring you all the action.

The reigning World Amateur Champion, Arvinder Preet Singh won the 7th National Amateur Championship held in Jalandhar, Punjab. The tournament, organised by the regional daily, Punjab Kesari, saw local players shine as two of the top three players hailed from the host state. The finale of the event was especially nailbiting when the eventual winner, Arvinder Preet, finished with his sixth straight win after a bad start to clinch the tournament. Meanwhile, the overnight leader, Shubham Shukla, who also comes from Punjab, lost an equal game against Jammu and Kashmir's Soham Komatra to slip down to the third spot. Overall, amid some exciting chess, the tournament also went on to show the growing popularity of the game of chess in Punjab, which would not have been possible without the generous support of Punjab Kesari.

The all-new ChessBase 15 was introduced just a week ago. One of the power users of the software is five-time World Champion Vishy Anand. He wrote to ChessBase saying that he really liked the new Replay feature so far. So what exactly are those features and how does it work? In this tutorial, Martin Fischer teaches us all about "replay training", a new feature of ChessBase 15 that invites you to guess the moves in games — a well-known and powerful way to improve. Correct proposals are rewarded with points which allows you to measure your progress. "Replay training" is a nice feature that you can use for light-hearted fun and playful challenges but also for some serious training. Give it a try! | Drawing: ChessBase

Maestro Chess Academy Attackers unrated, Intermezzo and Royal Knight Chess Academy are the leaders in the rated category of ACL Challengers League 2018 at the conclusion of 3rd round. All three teams have scored three wins, thus they are at perfect score with 6.0/6 each respectively. Amulya and Shaurya of MCAA, Om Kharola and Krishnater of Intermezzo and Ravi Kant Tiwari of Royal Knight Chess Academy are the players who have scored all 3 wins. In this report, we bring you photos and the best games of round 3.

When a World Championship is played and games are ending in draws there are two types of spectators. The first one keeps shouting on top of their voice that it's a boring match and refuse to look thoroughly at the games. The most important thing for them is the decisive results. But there is a second group of chess players, much more serious in my opinion, who understand that the World Championship match is a fight between two of the most competent players in the world of chess and hence draws are of course very natural. What the serious student tries to do, is to study the games in great detail, learn from these masters and absorb the ideas in their own games. If you too would like to do that, then here's the detailed analysis of game 7 of the match by IM Sagar Shah.

After extensive coverage of Tata Steel Chess India 2018, ChessBase India is now here for detailed coverage of the World Championship Match 2018. Our idea is to provide you with live on the spot coverage of the games in a way where you can be updated with all that is happening in the match. Today is the seventh round and IM Sagar Shah along with Amruta Mokal, and Niklesh Jain bring you live coverage in English and Hindi. You will also get updated pgn files to with analysis and also interesting diagrams and screenshots. The score stands at 3-3. Will this be the decisive game?

The World Cadet Chess Championships 2018 were held in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain, from 3rd of November to 15th of November 2018.
The Championships were held for the age groups U08, U10 and U12, Girls and Open. This year a record number of 851 participants from 86 federations took part in the Championships and out of which 542 players took part in the open section and 309 in the girls. In this article Peter Long shares with us his experience of working with the U-10 World Girls Champion from Indonesia, Samantha Edithso and her wonderful journey from being an unrated to winning everyone's heart with her spectacular performance one after the other, being the youngest Olympian, winning the world cadet rapid championship and becoming the U10 girls world champion.

India started the year with 51 grandmasters. The last ones being Thejkumar (50th) and Saptarshi Roy (51st). Since then a lot of youngsters below the age of 20 have made it to the GM title. First was Praggnanandhaa (52nd). He was followed by Nihal Sarin (53rd), Arjun Erigaisi (54th), Karthik Venkatraman (55th) and Harsha Bharathakoti (56th). Just when it seemed like the world of chess belonged to youngsters, Karthikeyan Pandian, born in 1990, 28 years old brought back some balance by becoming India's 57th GM. Karthikeyan is married to a chess player Harini Sankaran, he has a three-year-old son, he trains big talents of Indian chess, he is an employee of Indian Railways and inspite of all these responsibilities managed to achieve his GM title.

The strongest chess event on Indian soil was held from the 9th to the 14th of November 2018. Three days of rapid chess and two days of blitz. Hikaru Nakamura had already won the rapid section with a dominating performance. In the blitz event, the American GM was racing ahead on the first day with 6.5/9. It seemed as if Nakamura would take home both the titles, but Vishy Anand had some other plans. The 48-year-old five time World Champion showed his class as he notched up one win after another. With 7.5/9 on day two he tied with Nakamura for the top spot. We then had a blitz playoff in which Anand triumphed and won the Tata Steel Chess India Blitz 2018. In this report we bring you pictures, videos, game analysis from Kolkata.

Harika got knocked out of the FIDE Women's World Championship 2018 after losing against former Women's World Champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk 2.5-3.5. Harika lost the first tie-break and she was on the brink of elimination, then she bounced back strong and won the second tie-breaker. The third tie-break match ended up in a draw and Kosteniuk came out victorious in the last one. Thus Harika's journey ended in the World Championship and with it the Indian representation. In this report, we bring you all four tie-break games, photos and videos from Khanty-Mansiysk. Photo: Official site

Usually chess annotators and journalists are in a hurry to complete their articles. They have deadlines to meet, they have to keep up their schedule. Hence, it doesn't come as a surprise that in their articles and annotations they miss stuff. Sagar Shah wrote a detailed final article from Tata Steel Chess India Rapid 2018. There were many interesting games and positions, but one that caught everyone's attention was the battle between Vishy Anand and Surya Sekhar Ganguly. The five-time World Champion's former second was able to play some inspired chess and catch Anand's king in the centre of the board. How did Anand lose so easily? What lay under the surface? Let's find out.

The National under-17 was being held in Sonipat, Haryana from the 3rd to the 11th of September 2018. Many of the top Indian players had gathered to play in this championship. Some of the big names included Mitrabha Guha, Srijit Paul, Kushager Krishnater, Tarun Kanth, Vatsal Singhania. All of them had an Elo of 2200+. But the tournament was won by Vedant Panesar, who was the 8th seed in this tournament. While Vedant is very well known in the local Mumbai circles as a strong player, this was his first huge success at the national level. A thoroughly hard working boy, Vedant has able to maintain a good balance between chess and education. In this article we get to know the champion better thanks to an interview by Avathanshu Bhat and Vedant also sends us six of his annotated games from the tournament for the readers of ChessBase India to learn and enjoy.

The Tata Steel Chess India 2018 Rapid came to an end on the 11th of November with American GM Hikaru Nakamura taking home the pole position with 6.0/9. Nakamura played the event as per the demands of the situation - calm on first and third days and three victories on day two! It was excellent news for Indian fans that Harikrishna managed to fight back with two wins against Levon Aronian and Vidit Gujrathi in last two rounds to finish second. Levon Aronian had to settle for the third spot. In this article we bring to you six things that happened on the last day of the tournament as well as information which sum up the first super tournament held in our country! Of course, one mustn't forget the big news - Vishy Anand was beaten by his former second Surya Sekhar Ganguly in the final round.

Harika made a quick draw in just 29 moves in French Defence Tarrasch variation against former Women's World Champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk. They will play tie-breaker matches to determine who will advance to the quarter-finals. Meanwhile, Ju Wenjun made a comfortable draw and Mariya Muzychuk ended Mobina Alinasab's dream run to advance to the quarter-finals. 12 players will have to play tie-breaker matches to determine which 8 players will move to the quarter-finals. Harika once again has to fire in the tiebreaks, something that she has been successful in the last two rounds against Khukhashvili and Khotenashvili. But Kosteniuk will not be an easy opponent to overcome. Photo: Official site

After a relatively sedate start on day one, things have begun to heat up at the Tata Steel Chess India Rapid 2018. On the second day we had eight decisive encounters out of the 15 games that were played. Hikaru Nakamura was on fire as he scored 3.0/3 beating Mamedyarov, Ganguly and Nihal. Levon Aronian has kept up the pace and with 4.5/6 is in joint lead with Nakamura. In this report we have the perfect balance of pictures, videos, and analysis. This article tells you how a tournament like Tata Steel Chess India 2018 is making such a big difference to chess culture of our country. We also bring you exclusive footage of Nihal Sarin battling out the big guys. After all, how often do you see a 14-year-old fighting it out against the big guys!

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